prologue to nothing

there was dirt under his nails –
those uncared-for nails,
bitten and with stains of blood,
having known the nervousness of his teeth –
and his eyes were cloudy,
sad
and gray,
perfect reflection
of the undecided sky above.
the bones of god’s word
would have fit perfectly in his palm,
if ever his palm had been free
of the memory of one house
on a nameless street
flooded with sunlight one summer morning.

white… everything was outrageously white, as if somehow heaven had spilled its entire bright purity over those limed walls… the only things preventing an explosion of light were some cracked wooden panes, striving to carefully protect the inside from the outside…

only the ghosts of those sunbeams
were able to make the clouds in his gaze
move aside,
and in those rare cases
one could see a pair of
incredibly sapphirine irises,
harboring like a living vault
the secrets of mankind glazed with sorrow…

some said that was the hideout of Samael, after trading his wings for Lilith’s resurrection. others said it was the place where souls were waiting to ascend after meeting Azrael. but nobody knew for sure what purpose did that place serve, and to whom it actually belonged.

nobody, except for him…
somehow he remembered
nothing prior to opening his eyes
upon that door.
he was standing in front of it,
feeling under his soles
the sun-heated cubic stones paving that street.
for him,
that was the second his life had begun,
and also the second when it had ended…
he had no idea
how much time he had spent inside that house,
wandering from one room to another,
marveling at the way
everything seemed to be perfect…
in the blink of an eye,
he just knew what it meant,
although he had no idea
how he knew that …

guided by the typical fear, mothers forbid their offspring to talk to him when he had emerged from that house. people kept whispering at corners that his shoulder blades bore the marks of the fallen, yet nobody wanted to listen to him when explaining why each small crack had its reasons and why his voice had become a prism, translating for them the rainbow hidden within the white…

after a while
he stopped talking.
he sat, silent, in the corner of some stairs,
in the middle of an ignorant world,
aware that people didn’t care
for the reason why he just wouldn’t
go back inside that perfect white house
and be happily forgotten…
because he just loved too much
the rainbow of their souls …

“Prologue to nothing” is the closing poem of Liliana’s volume “The hidden well”. For the audio version feel free to click below:

Thank you John :). This was a poem that, in its way, marked a change in my way of writing, at the time when I wrote it, and the structure is a part of that. I know it can be a little distracting, but what it tries to show is the different voices, the different points of view of the same aspect, and also, how you very well noticed, how the ignorant people’s inertia often condemns to silence the voice of reason. I’m glad you had the patience to go through it, and I’m also glad that it appears to have caught your attention in such a measure :). Thank you again!

This is a deep text, full of meaning. I feel there is much here that I cannot yet comprehend, but what I do see in its subtext is something, which talks to me about the sadness of the still and quiet voice of reason, drowned by the clamour of an ugly, selfish world. Very interesting physical structure to this piece too, Liliana, which at first distracted me, until I was able to refine my own understanding.